Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at Sugar and Snark. Since I wasn't sure about the Top 10 Tuesday theme this week, I chose to do it this way instead. Here are the guidelines for how it works if you want to join in:Each
week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers
with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5
favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make
a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in
Linky (so we can visit).You
don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be
great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!

I try to pick books I've already read, and all but one will be ones that I've read for this week. And I'll be doing 10 instead of 5.

And the number one book I'm picking, I haven't actually read all the way through, but I think it is the best one for this theme:

An ulterior motive I had for picking this book is that I can share the picture of me getting to meet the author last summer at BEA. I was one of the first in line, so I think he still was friendly and not bored or anything.

Monday, March 2, 2015

I'm very happy to be a part of the Last List Blog Hop to help out some authors who have recently had their publishing house close its doors. One of those authors is one that I've been a fan of since the first book in her Ashes trilogy. My spot on the tour is just supposed to be a review of the sequel to her book White Spaces. However, I haven't quite finished it yet. When I got my day to post, it just didn't quite fit in with the other books I had on schedule to review, and I even stopped reading one of those books. Now, the reason for this, these books are big! And they should be. It's just that they are very detailed stories, with so much world building and character building, that you can't just zoom through them like you can with other stories at times. So in order to keep on time with my post for the blog hop, I'm going to do a halfway through review as part one today, and then when I finish the book, I'll do a quick part two review, later this week, Thursday or Friday probably. If you haven't read the first one, then you should probably read my review of it HERE. Then skip over my short review below, and jump to the giveaway at the end!

Halfway-through review:

This time it's as if all our characters from the first book have kind of ended back up in one of their other "Nows". Even Emma has gone back to a different time from where she had been. She's back to where she was only 12 years old and had an accident on her bike. Only when she gets home, and no one is there to help her out, all of a sudden a woman with the Panop glasses shows up. Climbs through her window and comes after her. And it's not just that which is weird, it's also that she's remembering things that Lizzie said to them. About how they are part of a story. And so then things seem to not be real until she imagines them. And it's not just her, it is other characters. They are dreaming of times and places that only become more real as they think what should be there. The "Now" that the characters are either already in, or that they may end up in, is back in what is a pretty alternate London. One where a Peculiar fog has taken over, and a type of disease eats away at people. The time where Elizabeth/Lizzie is in a mental hospital. The time when there is a man named Arthur Conan Doyle. And while people here are looking for a Dickens Mirror, they don't know of anyone named Charles Dickens. Many of the characters here remember dying in the other "Now". But think it is just a dream. Even though their friends were there in some way.

So far the science has not been as intense as in the other book. But there was some really good stuff at the beginning. Like, this one fact that just really stood out to me. Now, I only know about Schrodinger's Cat because of The Big Bang Theory. But a true fact the author shared in the book is that Einstein didn't agree or believe in that theory! I wonder what my favorite nerd Sheldon would have to say about that. I love the nerdy science stuff!

If you enjoyed the first, you'll enjoy this one, although it is taking place in a much different time period. While the first book kind of jumped around to several different places, for the most part it stayed in more current times. This one began at some present day parts, but for the most part we're in that alternate London. I'm halfway through, but definitely wondering who the woman who climbed through Emma's window is, and in another now she climbed through a mirror, how? I also want to know just who the Kramer/doctor is, and why Doyle is playing such a big part. Is he really supposed to be the author? Or what?

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.
It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected. It's a rather large haul this week. Most free, but a few purchased. I want to show you just why I probably don't need to be buying anymore books, which a picture of my bookcase that is just for books I haven't read yet.

That brown bookcase is full of books I haven't read yet. Every single shelf. And they are packed into the shelves. And that's not all. On my entertainment center in the living room are my ARCs that I'm trying to get read before they are published. So, you can see why I need to stop getting new books. But, once again, I failed miserable at that this week. Physical ARCs:

The first I got as part of a blog tour I'm going to be participating in. The 2nd was at the bookstore where I work part time and I got my hands on it last night! So excited to read both of them!

Books won:

I won an autographed copy of the first one from Jessi at Novel Heartbeat. I've already read it, but loved it, and so glad to have a copy of it! The other two are books I've heard great things about and I won them from Mary at Bookhounds/BookhoundsYA.

Physical books purchased:

The first one is a really cool book that I think I saw featured in Entertainment Weekly magazine awhile back, and I thought as a librarian it would be a good book to have. Bone Season is one that I've heard a lot about, and I was so excited when I saw it in the bargain section of the bookstore where I work. The hardcover of the book for only $5.98, plus my employee 30% discount, well, I couldn't pass it up. Same for the last book. I am a huge Twilight fan, and this was on the bargain table for $9.98, and it was originally $39.99. I couldn't pass up getting it to add to my collection of all things Twilight, again especially when I factored my 30% off that low price.

E-galleys:
-->

The first one is from Netgalley, and the other two are from Edelweiss. I think I might have figured out a way to save myself on the Netgalley stats. Not to download them till closer to when I'm going to actually read them. But I will still put them in my little book where I keep track of what egalleys I want to read when. Maybe that will help?

Free ebooks:
-->

The first one just sounds like a cute, fun read. The 2nd one I downloaded for free as part of an entry into a giveaway on the author's blog.

So, that is what I added to both real and virtual shelves this week. What books joined your collection this week?

And while you're here, you should stop by and enter my giveaway for Bones and AllHERE.

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for sending me an ARC of this title and letting me sign up for the Street Team! This was a very unique read. I actually went through several thoughts about this story as I read it. I started out very excited, followed by wondering if I was going to really get into it, then I figured out what was kind of going on, then I felt the love, then I was sad about the love, and at the end I was pleased with the story over all.

The main character is Maren. Maren has a deep, dark secret. Basically you'd call her a cannibal. But not one that cooks and eats the meat of a human like you'd think. No, once she starts, it is only mere minutes before there is no trace of the person left, other than any blood that might get on her clothes or the person's clothes. Bones and all are gone. It happened first when her mother left her with a babysitter as an infant. Of course she has no memory of that. The next time was a boy at summer camp. Every time it happens her mother has to move them. While there really isn't any evidence left to prove that Maren did what she did, it is just safer. When the story really begins, Maren is 16, and she has woken up to find a note from her mother, who has left her on her own. The note also includes a copy of her birth certificate. Maren knows her mother has gone to her parents, grandparents she's never met. But she also wants to meet her dad. Her mom has left her money, and she used the money to buy a bus ticket to where she knows her grandparents are. She finds her way to the house and looks in the window. She sees her mother crying, and knows that she is the reason. At the grocery store a little old lady sees Maren and wants to help her out. Asks Maren to help her home with her groceries and she'll fix her a nice lunch. On the bus trip to the woman's house, Maren first sees the creepy old man she will come to know as Sully.

Sully will soon meet up with Maren, and she will find out she is not the only one of her kind. Only Sully eats dead people. He offers for her to come and stay with him. But next she just wants to find her dad. So she heads that way. Only now she's kind of short on money. So she tries hitchhiking, which only works so far. She gets to a Walmart where she meets another of her kind, Lee. Lee is a 19 year old boy. And the people he eats are all "bad people". And he helps Maren out even when she can't help herself and eats another boy that is trying to help her. For some reason she attracts boys who just want to help her, and then she can't help herself. She and Lee are able to get along and he promises to help her get to see her father. They run into Sully along the way. And while Maren still feels like he is trying to mentor her and be her friend, Lee doesn't trust Sully.

Maren will find her father, and of course her daydreams of getting to live with him are only that, dreams. She and Lee will have a disagreement about what she should do, about Sully, about her dad, with her life. She will fall in love, she will meet her father, and that will be a touching moment, even if it's not all she dreamed of. There will be young love, and there will be heartbreak. And in the end, it of course can't really be happily ever after, not for someone who eats people.

A very unique story as I said. We don't really get much of a glimpse into the actual eating of people. We don't know for sure just why they do it. We only know that it isn't just Maren, that there are other people in the world, maybe more than ever would be imagined. And in the end, we will root for Maren, knowing she can't help what she does, and that for the most part she is trying to stop herself. You'll root for young love, and hate when the heartache comes. At least I did.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Cover Characteristic is hosted at Sugar and Snark. Here are the guidelines for how it works if you want to join in:Each
week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers
with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5
favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make
a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in
Linky (so we can visit).You
don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be
great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!

I do try to pick books I've read, and for some, I liked both of the covers in a series, so I will include them together for one number. 5.

4.

3.

2.

1.
-->

And a bonus cover that I had to also use:

At first I wasn't sure if I'd come up with 5 that I liked, and then I had more than five, but I kept myself to just six.

Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Tyri wants to be a musician and wants to be with someone who won’t belittle her musical aspirations.

Q-I-99 aka ‘Quinn’ lives in a scrap metal sanctuary with other rogue droids. While some use violence to make their voices heard, demanding equal rights for AI enhanced robots, Quinn just wants a moment on stage with his violin to show the humans that androids like him have more to offer than their processing power.

Tyri and Quinn’s worlds collide when they’re accepted by the Baldur Junior Philharmonic Orchestra. As the rift between robots and humans deepens, Tyri and Quinn’s love of music brings them closer together, making Tyri question where her loyalties lie and Quinn question his place in the world. With the city on the brink of civil war, Tyri and Quinn make a shocking discovery that turns their world inside out. Will their passion for music be enough to hold them together while everything else crumbles down around them, or will the truth of who they are tear them apart?

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting. I've picked a book that is a sequel to a book I just read back in December and loved! I am such a huge fan of Amanda Hocking, and I love that the next book in the Kanin Chronicles comes out in May, with the 3rd book in August. So happy to not have to wait a year in between each one. I loved the first book, Frostfire, and here is the blurb from Goodreads about book 2:

Bryn Aven has always longed to be a part of the Kanin world.

Though she has no social status because she’s a half-breed, she refuses to give up on her dream of serving the kingdom she loves. It’s a dream that brings her to a whole new realm . . . the glittering palace of the Skojare.

The Skojare people need protection from the same brutal rival who’s been threatening the Kanin, and, being half Skojare herself, it’s a chance for Bryn to learn more about her heritage. Her boss Ridley Dresden is overseeing her mission and wants to help. He’s always been her most trusted friend—but as their undeniable attraction heats up, he becomes a distraction she can’t afford.

Brynn is about to discover that the Skojare world is full of secrets, and as she’s drawn in deeper and deeper, she doesn’t know who to trust. As she gets closer to Ridley, she realizes she may not even be able to trust her own heart.

If you haven't read the first one yet, you definitely should. As well as picking up the Trylle trilogy as well. So tell me, what book are you eagerly awaiting this week?